I've been writing a shorter thesis on Swedish missionaries in China around the late 1800s. While writing a part about the missionaries accounts of footbinding, I realized I didn't know whether or not the empress herself had her feet bound? Some of the books I've used mentions that manchu-women usually didn't do it, and Cixi herself apparently tried to ban it for a while, but I can't find anything about it direcly in any of the litterature I got while writing.
So my question is, was empress dowager Cixi feet bound? Did she follow the han tradition or the manchu tradition?
The apparent Sinicisation of the Manchus is something that really did not occur until after the Qing Dynasty fell. As a member of the Yehe Nara clan, one of the most prestigious Manchu clans (Nurhaci's chief consort and mother of his successor, Hong Taiji, was a member of the Yehe Nara clan), Cixi would have been particularly attuned to Manchu customs within what was already a generally quite culturally isolated Banner communicy. While her ascendancy was to be a time of significant Han advancement, she nonetheless generally worked to bolster the relative status of the Banners. To have opted for Han tradition over Manchu would have been exceedingly degrading for someone so close to the imperial court. And for some direct evidence, looking at photos such as this, you can see that her feet are not bound – or at least infer it from the fact that she is wearing tall platform shoes.
I've written an answer giving a brief overview foot-binding among the Han here, but I'm no specialist in this area so there is certainly much more material that can be found.
